


Someone Who Gets It

by oMgYn0l0g1ns27



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bit of everything, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, They're all bi, everyone is nice to each other, i think, prison is hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 14:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15050696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oMgYn0l0g1ns27/pseuds/oMgYn0l0g1ns27
Summary: Rosa and Jake both survive prison, but struggle to deal with the emotional ramifications. Slowly, their shared experience draws them together. Amy loves them both and is as supportive as she can be.Canon until the end of 5x01.





	1. Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Brooklyn 99 is a comedy so can't really deal with serious topics like the emotional ramifications of being falsely imprisoned but you can't tell me Jake wasn't traumatised. And I love Rosa, so.

Prison was way harder than Rosa expected.

The fights and the threats she could deal with; her whole _thing_ was specifically designed to let her stare down people she’d otherwise have been scared of.

Four years in Vice were plenty of time to get it perfect. Amidst the constant danger of New York’s drug scene, she shed the giddy, girlish excitement of her youth for a cloak of violence. Ballet and gymnastics became hand-to-hand combat; touches and affection became a careful, respectful distance; sharing became secrets. She liked it. The power of fear, the respect of stoicism and the privacy of a blank mask let her keep all her thoughts and dreams safe and hidden away in a cocoon of her own making. It was necessary to stay alive and sane when the threat of being stabbed in your sleep was always just a little too possible, and the possibility of having to hurt an innocent man was always just a little too threatening.

When the East Coast branch of the Claymore gang were brought down, she kept all the tough trappings of Rosa Garcia as she sunk back into Rosa Diaz. She never spoke the name again, but felt safe in Garcia’s leather jacket. She kept that too.

She smirked when she remembered Jake’s face when she transferred to the Nine-Nine, morphing from shock to confusion to quiet acceptance as his old Academy buddy strutted in with a whole new look and attitude to match. He never mentioned the difference.  Now, the things that once brought her comfort were reserved for the sanctity of her apartment. Complete separation. Rosa Garcia was gone; Emily Goldfinch was chatty; Lucia Rodriguez taught ballet; and Rosa Diaz was a hardass cop who didn’t flinch.

In jail, “cop” made her a target, but “hardass” got her left alone. Never trusted; never bothered. So yeah, the fights and the threats were fine.

Everything else though? Everything else sucked. The injustice of the whole thing stung, the food was bland, and the interior decorating was awful. Was it a requirement that whoever designed these places had to have no grasp of colour theory? She hated the way the guards looked at her like dirt, and had held herself back from beating them into a pulp more than once lest she end up in convicted for an offense she’d actually committed.

She could have dealt with all of that if it weren’t for the total lack of privacy. Everyone here knew everything: her name, her “crime”, where she slept, what she owned. She tried putting a lock on the cabinet beside her bed from commissary, but knowing that the slimy guards could get in any time they wanted kind of ruined the effect. Besides, it only took two nights for her roommate to break the damn thing off. Rosa wasn’t sure what she was in for, this tiny woman with the buzzcut and eyes that always seemed glazed over, but she guessed theft.

She hated feeling exposed. The lights never switched off completely at night, so she could always be seen, and every flickering shadow felt like some angry perp she’d put away coming for revenge. She could take them in a fair fight, _obviously_ , but her sharpened toothbrush wasn’t much compared to what she knew some of the women in her block were packing.

She missed her knives.

She’d bought a really nice one, before everything had gone down, with a single ruby in the hilt. She wasn’t normally one for fancy furnishings in her weapons, but with the new taskforce everything had finally seemed to be looking up. It wasn’t her sharpest, or her strongest, or her most accurate, but it was... pretty. It made her feel pretty. At night she imagined twirling it between her fingers, watching the light catch it and feeling like Rosa again. Diaz or Garcia, she wasn’t sure. Instead, she lay in her plain uniform, in her beige surroundings, and ground her teeth until morning.

Really though, she’d take any form of weapon sharper than the plastic beneath her pillow: anything to feel like she wasn’t about to get jumped; like some dealer wasn’t about to put his hand on her knee; some homophobe about to spit at her.

It was reassuring to know that her whole collection would be waiting for her when she got out: there were only two detectives in New York smart enough to find where she’d stashed them, and the NYPD had falsely imprisoned both of them.

Okay, three. It wasn’t like Amy was going to rat Rosa out anyway.

As the days rolled by and “when she got out” became “if she got out”, she was less and less reassured.

\---

Jake was trying to count his blessings.

  1. Now that he was in GenPop, he was probably less likely to get eaten than when he was alone with his cannibal roomie.
  2. He only had to count to two.



There had been a moment when he nearly considered doing whatever he needed to do to get protection from Romero’s gang. Kill the guard; get out of this whole ordeal alive. If it were between him and an abusive guard, surely he should save himself?

The horror had clamped down on him like a vice immediately after. Guilt followed, and shame stayed. John McClane would _never_ have thought about giving in, and Jake Peralta would _never_ kill in cold blood. At least, he had thought he wouldn’t.

He was just so scared.

He tried to joke through it, drawing on the charm that had saved him so many times before, but nothing about this was funny. Prison was not a game he could win, or a puzzle he could solve. Nobody here was playing.

Even at his most bruised, it was the shame that hurt the most. Amy and Charles’ visits brought brief joy, and briefer hope of being cleared, but the idea that he wasn’t even the same person they loved floated in the back of his head. Apparently, he was someone who entertained the idea of _killing a man._ He’d never been good enough for Amy - or Charles, for that matter - but this was a new low.

He didn’t even want to think of what Captain Holt would say.

A month before he’d have dismissed anyone who killed or conspired to as a gross murderer. Now, he kind of got it. Every perp he’d put behind bars swam in front of his eyes for days on end. What if they were innocent? What if he’d screwed up like the officers on his case, damned a human being to the same constant trapped fear as him? And even if they were guilty, how was he any better? Where was the line between good guy and bad guy?

_Cool motive, still murder. Hypocrite._

Obsessing over his case kept his thoughts in a vaguely logical order, working it again and again until he could almost see the word “Detective” in front of his name again. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see any new leads at all. In fact, it was seeming more and more likely that he’d be here for a long time. More importantly, it was seeming less and less likely that his name would ever be cleared.

He bet Rosa wasn’t having any of these problems. She always knew what to do, right from wrong, who she was. She was probably loving prison.

\---

When the warden approached her cell, she didn’t tell Rosa that Hawkins has been arrested. The two of them had reached an understanding of mutual silence. At least, Rosa _thought_ they had an understanding. It’s possible the woman just didn’t speak.

Rosa got up and followed her.

She crept through newly opened doors with her shoulders raised and muscles tensed. When given clothes she put them on without complaint, recognising them as those she entered in - the leather jacket was safely stashed far, far away from the prison. It was only when she was presented with a form to sign and her mother’s many stern lessons on reading the small print rose to her mind, that she began to understand. Words like “acquittal” and “apologies” swam in front of her eyes.  

Then she made eye contact with her dad.

Rosa smirked as the guards behind her took an unconscious step back, wilting at her dad’s expression. She wondered what they’d do if they knew this was his ecstatic face. All those years ago she had modeled her persona on his silently intimidating presence. She could never tell if he was proud of it or not. They never spoke about it. Now, as he opened his arms for her to step into, the one welcoming part of his body language, she realised for the first time in far too long that she really cared. As used to protecting herself as she’d become, as expertly as she could attack in defence, the acceptance of her father made her feel safer than she had in years. His arms were strong, though she knew from the last time she’d seen him - Christmas, about 6 months ago - that she could bench more than him. He smelt the same as he had done since she was a kid.

Her mom hadn’t changed a bit either. She thought her hair might be a little greyer, but as she brought Rosa into a hug, much tighter than her dad’s, her whispered affections washed over her and held her more firmly than her arms. She felt some of the tension in her shoulders relax.

She felt the ghost of Rosa Diaz tap her on the shoulder. Not the right one, the cop she’d moulded herself into, but the little girl she’d long since left behind. The child who took after her mother. It was a vulnerability that sent an uncomfortable twisting down her spine, but with her mother’s hand rubbing between her shoulder blades, she almost didn’t mind.

\---

Jake had been in solitary for far too long when news of his freedom reached him. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the conversations he’d been having with an imaginary Amy; his twice daily reenactments of Disney classics; or his newfound tendency to blank out while staring at a wall for long periods of time. He was just so _lonely._

Being an only child had not gotten him used to time by himself. Gina’s constant, loud presence throughout his childhood - plus some issues that he never liked to try to identify but which were definitely his dad’s fault either way - had left him only really comfortable when surrounded by friends. Maybe there was just too much going on in his head for him to be alone. Maybe there wasn’t enough.

All things considered, Jake was not a man who could withstand solitary confinement easily. His brain felt weird and his mouth always tasted like copper. As he left the box that had become his home, he felt his lungs expand for the first time in months. At least it was finally over.

The tears were already falling by the time he saw his mom, her mouth twisted in love and pity and pride. His vision tunneled as he rushed forward to hug her. He’d missed her while inside. He saw her about as often as he did while he was working, his schedule - and, he’ll admit, his forgetfulness - keeping him from visiting even as a free man, but prison had given more time to think about everything he couldn’t have. He never thought that a hug from his mom would be high on that list, given that he was a cop in his thirties, but he guessed this need never really went away.

He didn’t even have time to be disappointed that his father wasn’t there when he heard a familiar throat being cleared.

“Captain Holt!”

Shit, his voice was hoarse. When had he last spoken to someone?

“Detective Peralta. It’s good to see you.”

He thought he could hear the relief and affection in Holt’s tone, but it was never easy to tell. Either way, the tears fell faster than ever as he too fell forward to hug his captain. His chest heaved, sobbing in disbelief as a single, stiff arm came up to rest lightly on his back.

His mom cooed at him in a way that was slightly uncomfortable, no matter how young he _felt_ , and rambled something about taking him home, about home cooked food and his old bed. Bile rose in his stomach - not at the thought of his mom’s cooking (though he inherited his incompetence in this regard from her) but at the idea of going home to that empty house. He needed noise, and laughter, and voices babbling at him from every direction. He needed hands reaching out in comforting touches. He needed Amy. He needed his friends.  

Somehow, Captain Holt got it.

“Peralta, your squad would like to see you. I’d be happy to let them off a half hour early if you’re well enough to meet them at the bar. It’s up to you, of course. Karen, I hope you don’t mind?”

A smile broke out through his tears.

\---

Rosa was in one of her storage units, digging out her jacket from beneath the thirteen framed photos of David Hasselhoff and three different “kitten of the month” calendars she’d placed on top to throw off any suspicion of her ownership, when she got the call to come to the bar. She fired off a text to her mom to tell her she’ll be late for their reunion dinner, still somewhat embarrassed about her earlier emotion. The relief she’d felt on seeing her parents hadn’t lasted, the familiar feeling of potential threat rising and her heartbeat rising with it. She had stepped back before they could recognize her fear.

The thought of the noise of the bar, of all the strange bodies brushing past her, sat uncomfortably in her stomach. Still, it was this or go home - surrender further into childish vulnerability and lose the hardass exterior she’d worked so hard on. She needed to bite the bullet. Besides, refusing to come would have been essentially admitting she was scared to her colleagues. Losing their respect.

So she strode onto the subway and rode three stops over. Legless Jimmy (still with two legs attached, she’d never asked about the nickname) was in his usual spot, playing a harmonica in the awning of an abandoned butcher. As she approached from the side, he tensed.

“Annie.”

“Jimmy.”

He dug a dirty coin out of his back pocket, tossing it at her in a flurry of candy wrappers and lint. She picked it out of the sticky mess, lips pursed. In return, she took a hundred dollar note from her shirt pocket and threw it in his general direction. Thank God they hadn’t been able to freeze _all_ of her accounts - what the NYPD didn’t know can’t hurt her.

With a nod to Jimmy, she turned and left, snapping the coin in half as she went. The aluminium disc broke easily, and she carefully extracted a note from inside one half, memorizing the coordinates written on it. Only 20 minutes by train.

The longer journey allowed her to really take in the noises of her surroundings - the bodies pressed against her, the shifting eyes and sullen looks she was getting from left and right. Noticing her foot tapping against the carriage floor, she pressed it into the ground firmly, eyes fixed straight ahead.

When Rosa finally arrived at the graffiti-covered shipping container, hidden inconspicuously between two dumpers and behind a brutal block of an office building, she was impressed to see how deceptively secure it was. She wasn’t sure even she had bolt cutters strong enough to get through the padlocks on this thing. They were dirty, but as she took each one in hand and inspected them, she saw no scratches or dents. Brand new. Smiling approvingly, she keyed in the codes she’d muttered to Jimmy in a skeezy dive bar months before and swung the door open.

Her breathing quickened as she crept towards the single item in the place - her bike. Her real one: the one with the worn down leather on the seat and the chunk of plastic missing from the handlebars. The one with the single scratch along the body, half the length of her arm, revealing the bright red paintwork she’d covered over in black the day before she transferred to homicide.

She wasn’t sure how Holt and Terry had failed to notice she’d given them an entirely different bike to “keep warm” while she was inside (it wasn’t even the same shade of black, more of a burnt charcoal than midnight shadow), but she guessed cousin Roberto had done a pretty good job of selling the whole thing. He was one hell of a bluffer. Besides, he probably could have given the Sargeant a moped and the poor man wouldn’t have known.

She still couldn’t believe he’d actually ridden the damn thing. He had _children_.

The engine purred as she kicked it into life, feeling the slight warmth against her calves. Leaning forward, she rode off in its embrace.


	2. Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosa and Jake get out and see the Nine-Nine. 
> 
> Amy is stressed and in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As one of the wonderful commenters said in response to the last chapter "Amy Santiago has two hands!"
> 
> (seriously, to the people that commented, thank you so much, it means the world to me)

Amy didn’t understand why Jake wasn’t eager to go back to their apartment, but she wasn’t about to question it. It stung slightly that he didn’t want any time alone with her before he saw anyone else, almost as much as it had hurt her ego to admit that it would be better for Captain Holt to pick him up from prison than her. She never had been good at swallowing her pride, but this wasn’t the time to get competitive: she couldn’t think of a time when someone would need their dad more than after being falsely imprisoned.

(Sometimes she wondered if it was weird that they both saw the Captain as a father. Did that make them siblings?)

(Some things are better not to think about).

Sitting at the bar, she stirred the ice around in her glass - a soda, she didn’t want even One-Drink Amy to come out before Jake got here - and thought about what the hell she was going to say when he got there. _They_ got here.

Jake had been at the forefront of her mind for months, but she couldn’t wait to see Rosa. She’d missed the presence of another female cop in the precinct, someone who understood what she was dealing with everyday, who dealt with the same things she did and had her back. She couldn’t claim to _understand_ her, but she’d come to rely on her. Even if she hadn’t, her gut twisted at the thought of Rosa alone in jail. She knew that her colleague was tough, and would hate to hear of Amy’s pity, but she _also_ knew that Rosa was a homebody at heart. She’d seen her old apartment, for goodness’ sake! Rosa had surely coped far better than Jake, but Amy was surprised to hear she’d agreed to come to the bar as well.

She ran through countless lines in her head, trying to figure out what to say to Jake. It was the time she’d see him as a free man - she needed to be witty, comforting, casual, familiar… maybe a little bit sexy? Was it inappropriate to try to be sexy to a man just out of prison? Or would he like it, after so long apart?

She discarded the idea of concocting an innuendo immediately - any attempt at subtlety would be ruined by her boyfriend’s automatic “title of our sex tape” comment, and she just wasn’t up for hearing that in front of her Captain. No, she needed flirty _and_ work-appropriate.

“The hardened criminal returns”? _Too easy for him to joke about the word “hardened”._

“Good to see you again”? _Not personal enough. What was this, a Council for Subway Etiquette committee panel? Oh god, she’d forgotten to prepare for the meeting tomorrow. She’d never make secretary like this._

_Priorities!_

“Come here often?”? _Could work. It was funny, a little flirty…_ Or “can I buy you a drink?” _Either would be fine_ . _But which one? And what if Charles chose something better?_

God, this was freaking her out. Why couldn’t there be a course on this, or at least a binder with some helpful strategies?

She wasn’t ready.

She was _so_ ready.

\---

Jake and Holt were waiting for Rosa outside the bar, Holt’s hand resting comfortingly on Jake’s back. Rosa felt a brief flash of hurt that Holt has chosen to meet Jake before her, but brushed it aside. She didn’t need him. Jake did.

She hadn’t spared much thought for Jake while she was in prison, assuming that he’d do better than her in such a crowded environment. Her stomach twisted in the grimace that her face didn’t show as she took him in and realised she had been wrong. He looked bad. Real bad. He was freshly shaven, with a nick beneath his jaw that looked new, but his hair was longer than he’d been keeping it recently. He was definitely thinner, and a pallor was spread across his cheeks that made him look nauseous. He grinned when he saw her, raising a hand in greeting with a cheery “Diaz!”, but it was nowhere near as obnoxious as usual.

The biggest change was his posture. He was leaning back into Holt’s hand, not quite as if the Captain was holding him up, but as if Jake wished he would. His shoulders were more rounded than usual, the overly-confident stance that she knew he’d developed as a defence mechanism back in the Academy gone in favour of rounded shoulders and fidgeting hands.

He looked like Rosa felt.

“Peralta.” she nodded, stuffing her hands in her pockets and keeping her face blank. “You look good. Prison treat you well?”

The noise he emitted was somewhere between a wheeze and a giggle. “Oh, you know. It’s all good. You?”

She fought the urge to take a step back, the back of her neck itching. “The same. You guys go on ahead, I’ve just got to… fix the bike.” she gestured at the vehicle in question, eyes shifting as she wished she’d considered an excuse more believable than the bike _she rode in on_ being broken.

Thankfully, Jake seemed in a hurry to get inside the bar. He nodded eagerly and walked away, a kind of jumpy shuffle-step that made him look either nervous or constipated. It was unclear whether she was planning to take a minute to gather herself or just book it. Honestly, she reckoned it was about fifty-fifty either way. She locked eyes with the Captain, who seemed unsure whether to stay or go. It was always hard to tell what he was thinking, but she was pretty sure his left eyelid was twitching in the same way that it had when he’d attempted to advise her on breaking up with Marcus. Out of his depth.

“You picked him up?” she asked, the question more implied than inflected.

“I thought Detective Peralta might want to see the Nine-Nine before going home. He’s spent some time in solitary. I thought it prudent to offer him the opportunity.”

Solitary. Huh. Lucky bastard.

“He looks terrible.”

“Yes. Shall we head inside?”

So the bike excuse hadn’t worked. For a man so unreadable, he was perceptive.

“Whatever.” She forced her feet forwards.

“You know, Detective Diaz, nobody would think less of you if you wanted to go home. You seem… discomforted.”

“I’m fine. Let’s go.”

She could feel the backs of her hands begin to itch as they walked across the parking lot, the way they did when she knew they’d be safer as fists. She kept them carefully relaxed; the last thing she needed was to punch out her Captain in a fit of adrenaline and lose the job she just got back.

\----

He wasn’t ready.

Oh god, where was that sweat coming from? Could you sweat out of your shins? Was he _bleeding?_ Maybe that’s what was making his heart go so fast. He couldn’t go in to see Amy for the first time covered in blood!

His feet were leaden as he hurried towards the bar door, dragging against the asphalt. He was definitely going to trip. He was going to trip, and everyone would laugh, and Captain Holt would frown, and Amy would leave, and then someone was going to come and tell him there had been a mistake and he was going to go back to prison. It was going to happen. It was. He was screwed.

He couldn’t do this.

Stepping inside the building was somehow even worse, the cool air against his skin suddenly replaced by an oppressive humidity. Was that whining noise him? Cool. Cool cool cool. He was definitely trapped, and this was definitely a sting operation, and he was _definitely_ going back to jail.

They couldn’t see him yet, the Nine-Nine. Couldn’t see the way he shook. He still had time to get it together. Keep it chill. He was chill. He tried to do the breathing exercises his mom used when her pottery projects went wrong, before she gave up on them and reached for a glass of wine. Was it in and out for four each? Or in for four and out for three? Maybe it was just focus on the breathing and hope for the best.

He was beginning to understand why she always just went with the wine.

His forehead felt cool as he pressed it against the wall, the brick rougher than the smooth concrete of solitary. His blood rushed in his ears, drowning out the murmur of the bar and the whistle of the wind beneath the drafty door. It was no wonder then, that he was not even _slightly_ expecting to feel Holt’s hand clamp down firmly on his shoulder. He really hoped he and Rosa would just ignore how high he jumped. He had a comforting feeling that they would.

\---

Entering the building, they found Jake with his back against the wall of the entranceway, hidden out of sight of the bar and its patrons. His chest was heaving.

“You alright there, Peralta?” she asked, trying to sound sardonic but coming across concerned.

“Sure, sure, cool, cool, no doubt, no doubt” was the reply Rosa got, and the one she expected, but was it _even faster_ than usual? She cocked an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

“Right. You going in or what?”

Jake squeaked in the affirmative and squared his shoulders. Rosa turned towards the doorway to the bar, tuning into the low-level noise and feeling her stomach twist. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be alone, with a beer in her apartment and nobody to watch her or bother her or hurt her.  

Captain Holt had other ideas. “Shall we?” he asked, sounding more like “we shall” as he marched in.

\---

As the three of them turned towards the door that would take them from the entranceway to the actual bar, Jake felt a real grin split across his face, wide and maybe slightly teary, as Charles’ voice piped up from inside. He couldn’t _wait_ to sit down with him, probably hold him until he stopped crying about how much he’d missed his best friend, and hear about everything that had gone down while he was gone. Visiting time just wasn’t long enough for Charles to describe his meals with as much detail as he liked to, and Jake was going to make sure he heard about every single one properly.

Then the door swung open and his vision blurred. The buzzing movement and heat from all the different bodies hit him like a subway car. The floor beneath him was definitely tilting, and he subconsciously began to reach back to lean on someone, anyone.

Then he saw her.

The one clear figure in the entire room, Amy Santiago stood in front of him as beautiful as the day he first pissed her off. She was turning to face him, her hair flowing around as she moved. He thought he could smell her anti-dandruff shampoo, though he knew that was ridiculous: she was too far away, and only bought odourless anyway. So maybe it wasn’t a smell, but something washed over him all the same - _home._

“It’s so good to be back.” The words fell from his lips in a whisper, outwith his control, but it was true all the same. Behind him, Rosa’s “amen, brother” chimed out. His tight throat loosened somewhat, feeling her agreement. Rosa got it. It was nice to have someone who understood, he thought.

That distraction couldn’t last long, because Amy was walking towards him, and he suddenly had to put all his focus into not falling straight into her arms.

“Can I buy a free man a drink?” she asked, and her voice sounded lighter than it had in all the times she’d visited him. They were free; free together.

“I’d rather have a drink of that mouth” was his _ridiculous_ reply. Never mind his anxieties, he deserved to go back to prison for that one. Jesus.

\---

Amy closed her eyes and tried to drown out Charles’ voice. In his buzzing excitement, he’d taken to randomly announcing Rosa and Jake’s entry at regular intervals. She wasn’t sure if it was in the hope that he could somehow make them appear by pure force of will, or if he was just hoping to be right eventually for the sake of the drama. She remembered being small, announcing the green man at pedestrian crossings, trying to get it at the exact right moment. Her brothers yelled at her to shut up until she cried. She suddenly felt a lot more sympathy for them than she had at the time. The first couple of times he’d called out her friends’ arrival she’d turned around hopefully. Now she wasn’t willing to swallow the disappointment when he turned out to be wrong.She sipped her beer, foot tapping impatiently. She just wanted Jake’s arms around her again, was that such a great ask?

Still, a stopped clock is going to be right twice a day. As Charles exercised his vocal cords for the seventh time this hour, she felt rather than heard her friends walk in. Maybe she was attuned to Jake’s presence; maybe her body was reacting to the filling of the whole that had been sitting in her chest for months; maybe she was just used to being on guard when Rosa entered a room or getting ready to snap to attention when her Captain approached; but she _felt_ it. She turned slowly, clapping along with the rest of the squad and ignoring her hammering heart and moulding her face into a grin that she hoped came across as sexy confidence instead of constipation. Her peripheral vision caught the slight quirk of Rosa’s lips that told her she probably hadn’t managed. She briefly considered questioning why exactly she was so adept at picking up the movements of Rosa’s lips but pushed the thought aside. Her eyes focused solely on Jake.

He was gaunt, and grey, but his eyes twinkled as much as they always had and he was looking at her with bursting adoration.

“It’s so good to be back!” he sighed, and Amy vaguely heard Rosa’s distant “Amen, brother.”

“Can I buy a free man a drink?” she asked, walking towards him with a smile and sending up a silent thankful prayer that it came across as smoothly as it had in her imagination.

“I’d rather have a drink of that mouth” was his reply, and she could see the regret in his eyes as soon as he said it. She felt her love bloom in her chest as he stumbled over a half-hearted apology, leaning in to kiss him as she’d wanted to for so long. His lips were chapped, but that was nothing new. They were just as soft as she remembered and his hand rested on the small of her back as he pulled her closer towards him. She felt the heat of his  chest as they pressed into each other.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

It was so damn good to say it, and know they had all the time in the world to keep saying it, over and over, again and again.

“Hello, I’m also back.”

Amy spun, trying to slip on her “impress Rosa” mask: the one she’d spent longer trying to perfect than necessarily made sense for a professional relationship (Rosa was _cool_ , and Amy wanted her approval, wanted them to be a badass pair of female cops, was that too much to ask?). Prison hadn’t made her any less beautiful, which was unfair. She didn’t look nearly as bad as Jake, but Amy had taken three separate classes on reading microexpressions - there were different boards of examiners in New York, and she liked to cover her bases - and she could see the anxiety in her eyes flashing like a beacon.

“Hey, Rosa!” she squeaked, her mask absolutely failing her. Damn it.

Rosa ignored Amy’s flailing, turning instead to face Jake. “So I heard you spent some time in solitary. Pretty dope, right?

“Uh…. I handled it well.”

\---

If Rosa was in the habit of attemptting to pinpoint her emotions, and she absolutely was not, she would have spent more time trying to figure out what exactly the ugly twinge she felt at the base of her jaw (or her stomach? Maybe her chest. Come to think of it, she might just have been having a tiny heart attack) was as she watched Jake and Amy kiss. As it was, she dismissed it as envy, or loneliness, or pining for Adrian. Emails were all very well, but a physical body helped sometimes too. Whatever.

She stalked off to get a drink, something strong (but perhaps less likely to kill her than the moonshine that the woman in C Block sold) and bitter. At the bar, she leant with her back to the bartender, skin crawling at the thought of giving a man with so much access to sharp cutlery access to the space between her shoulder blades but unable to take her eyes from studying the bar’s patrons. They were blocking the exits. Her skin hummed, heel tapping against the wood of the stool next to her.

“Ma’am, are you buying a drink or not?” came an impatient voice behind her, thankfully a safe distance away. Turning reluctantly, she scanned the bottles that hung on the walls. It was nice, the choice laid out in front of her. The freedom. No stupid schedule, or meal plan. No need to pick something her cellmate wouldn’t want to steal. She could just… pick a drink. And drink it. And it would be hers.

Nice. Maybe this night wouldn’t suck after all.

Then a fist hit her shoulder and that spark of hope sputtered out. Her hands moving before her brain had time to consider what was going on, Rosa whipped around, one shaking claw latching onto the wrist beside her head and the other reaching for the jugular above her. She may not have sourced her knives back yet, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t protect herself with her bare hands.

Her eyes locked with Terry’s, the sergeant looking down at her in pure terror. Come to think of it, the punch had been pretty light - more friendly than aggressive. “Damn, Rosa! Terry can’t die! Terry has children!”

She was pretty sure she could feel her pulse running along its base (there isn’t a pulse point there, she’s aware, because if there was she’d know its exact location and how to open it) as she considered her options. Backtrack was the best bet.

“Sorry. Jumpy.”

Terry smiled nervously, like he was dealing with a particularly dangerous big cat. “Of course. I was just going to buy you a drink? It’s good to see you.”

Rosa smiled tightly. “I’m good. Thanks. Want to buy one myself.”

“No worries” Terry replied, already backing away. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Rosa was already turned back to the bar, ordering three of the first shots on the board.

\---

The wood of the bar wall was cool against Amy’s back, and she leaned into it, resting her head back as she exhaled through her nose.

Jake was surrounded by his friends, his eyes crinkling in a way that just about looked genuine and his posture becoming steadily more relaxed. The headache that had rested at the base of her skull since he left her arms to buy his first beer in months was abating slightly as she watched him interact with the rest of the squad. Charles looked like someone had just told him that his favourite foods had become animated as sexy women who all wanted to sleep with him and listen to his deepest fears; Terry’s pectorals were bouncing of their own joyful accord; even Holt was cracking a smile. Her boyfriend was drinking in their attention, his hands moving - and his drink almost spilling - as he told stories of his time inside. He was in his element, he was comfortable, and he was _not_ safely in her arms and in their bed.

Still, Amy knew how to be supportive. He would be all hers later. For now, he needed this. Maybe _she_ needed to hold him, to feel him - warm and strong and soft around the middle - but this was about him. So she could wait. Besides, she was making herself useful here. Her watchful eye was tracking Hitchcock and Scully as they attempted a game that was potentially _intended_ to be darts, making sure they neither ruined Jake’s return nor poked anyone’s eye out.

Slowly, she became aware of a dampness seeping across her hair. Jumping up, she tried not to think of whether it came from some form of age-related rot or a selection of the bar’s menu further fermenting as a sticky wall decoration. Either way, she was taking multiple showers the second she got the chance. Removed from her safe vantage-point of the corner, but unwilling to bring her introverted energy to a joyful celebration, she searched for a safe place to sit.

As it did far more often than she wanted to admit, her gaze landed on Rosa.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback appreciated


End file.
